When I am very busy, I read voraciously. Lately I’ve been devouring books. Lucky for me that each one was a complete pleasure, worth the effort. Many of the books were brief. In no particular order they are: City of Thieves by David Benioff (seen above). Slick writing and excellent storytelling propel this novel, which [...]

WHO Director Margaret Chan’s voice was steady and quiet this afternoon. as she said some fearful words: “I have decided to raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from Phase 4 to Phase 5.” But Chan, like the other women managing our national response to this crisis, was less fearful than practical. Reuters reports: “The [...]

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which causes some people to grow depressed during winter months because of the shorter hours of daylight, is a well-known phenomenon. Sufferers can be treated with light therapy, and spring usually brings natural relief to many. For the rest of us, the advent of better weather, longer days, new flowers and [...]

Having spent much of my career in the world of fashion as an editor and journalist for Harper’s Bazaar, owner of an accessory boutique and as a personal style consultant translating fashion trends into wearable possibilities, I am intrigued by the accessory trends over the past several years. First it was the oversized embellished handbag, [...]

This weekend, between swine flu, the revelations about torture memos by former officials, and the football draft, lurked two more stories about women stepping in and stepping up. In Iceland, voters overwhelming selected as prime minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, who’d first taken the job in February, replacing David Oddsson, who’d shepherded the nation into a free-market [...]

Trading a carob energy bar for your best friend’s onion rings isn’t an easy task at seven. Neither is explaining why you don’t have cable or air conditioning at your house. Most of my childhood was spent trying to comprehend why my mother wouldn’t just conform, make things simpler.  I couldn’t understand her willful denial [...]

The weekend news has been full of alarming statistics about a new Swine flu, Influenza A H1N1, that has affected almost 1500 people in 3 states in Mexico and is now in the United States and perhaps other countries as well.  This influenza outbreak has its own fingerprints.  It is spread from pigs to pigs [...]

Katherine McNamara  started crashing people’s  expectations early –  peeling off to Paris in the middle of a Cornell history Ph.D. and learning she was a poet, striking out for Alaska just as the oil boom was ending;  founding one of the first prestigious literary magazines  published entirely on the Internet. And ever since we met [...]

It was 1968.  The war in Vietnam was raging, the Beatles were making music for everyone to make love to, and my college peers were smoking pot, dropping acid and doing something with mushrooms to experience alternative realities and really find God.  They were going to demonstrations and changing the world. I was working full [...]

Academically trained in German language and literature at Colby (BA), Tufts (MA), and Harvard (ABD), Maria Luisa Arroyo is an educator, a single parent, a 2004 Massachusetts Cultural Council poetry grant recipient, a 2008 Massachusetts Unsung Heroine, a visual artist, and a self-taught poet. Her collections of poems include Gathering Words/Recogiendo Palabras (Bilingual Press, Tempe, AZ: [...]